History of the Peloponnesian War

At this change the party of Peisander and Alexicles and all the leading supporters of the oligarchy at once secretly left the city and went to Deceleia; but Aristarchus, alone of these, since he chanced to be a general, hastily took some bowmen of the most barbarous sort[*](The τοξόται in question are the police or city-guard of slaves, mostly drawn from Scythia (hence βαρβαροι). See Boeckh, Oecon. i. 276-278.) and proceeded to Oenoe.

It was an Athenian fortress on the borders of Boeotia, and the Corinthians, having called to their aid the Boeotians, were besieging it on their own account, because of a misfortune they had suffered at the hands of the garrison at Oenoe when they lost some men as they were returning from Deceleia.

So Aristarchus, after first making his plans known to the besiegers, deceived the garrison at Oenoe by telling them that their partisans in the city had made terms with the Lacedaemonians, and that, among other things, this garrison must surrender the place to the Boeotians; for the agreement had been made on these conditions. The garrison trusted him because he was a general, being in complete ignorance because they were in a state of siege, and evacuated the fort under a truce.

In this manner Oenoe was taken and occupied by the Boeotians, and thus the oligarchy at Athens and the struggle between the factions came to an end.

During this summer, about the same time as these events, the situation of the Peloponnesians in Miletus was as follows:[*](The general purport; there is no verb in the text for the subject οἱ τῇ μιλήτῳ πελοπονήσιοι. After the long parenthesis the subject is resumed in οὕτω δὴ ὁ μίνδαρος, “In these circumstances, then, Mindarus.”) None of the officers appointed by Tissaphernes at the time when he went to Aspendus would give them maintenance, and neither the Phoenician ships nor Tissaphernes himself had yet come; Philippus, who had been sent with him,[*](cf. 8.87.6.) and also another person, a Spartan named Hippocrates who was at Phaselis, had written letters to Mindarus, the admiral, saving that the ships would never come and that they were being wronged in all things by Tissaphernes; moreover, Pharnabazus was inviting them to come and was eager, when he should have got the assistance of the Peloponnesian fleet, to do just what Tissaphernes was to have done and to cause the rest of the cities within his province to revolt from the Athenians, hoping to gain some advantage thereby. In these circumstances, then, Mindarus put off from Miletus, in good order and, giving his fleet the command without previous notice that his move might not become known to the Athenians at Samos, he sailed for the Hellespont with seventy-three ships; for earlier in this same summer sixteen ships had sailed thither and had overrun a portion of the Chersonesus. Mindarus, however, was caught by a storm and forced to make harbour at Icarus; there he remained five or six days by reason of bad weather and then went on to Chios.